Posts from — March 2010

The Photographer's Ephemeris

I remember a couple of years back I was trying to shoot the full moon rising over the Pell Bridge from the Jamestown, RI, side. Having checked various internet sources for moonrise time, azimuth, etc., I had my compass handy to calculate exactly where it would rise.I arrived early, took a bearing with the compass and waited.

However, not being great at calculating declinination in my head, I wound up finding myself off by a few hundred yards and had to scramble to get myself in place. And, New England weather being what it is, by the time I set up camera and tripod in the correct spot, fog had rolled in and obscured the moon.

The Photographer's Ephemeris interface

Enter The Photographer’s Ephemeris,  a donation-ware Adobe Air program for visualizing the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris, or TPE for short, uses Google Maps and allows users to select a location and determine time and azimuth of sunrise or sunset for any given date. Click on a point withing TPE and it draws lines indicating the directions of sunrise and sunset and moonrise and moonset. You can choose Google Maps’ satellite, street map, or topgraphical views.

While all this data is available through numerous sources, TPE is the first I’ve seen that incorporates it into a dynamic map. While by no means an in-the-field tool (although it’s author, Stephen Trainor hints at an iPhone version down the road), it is a great planning tool for a landscape shooting safari.

And, because it’s an Adobe Air app, it works on both Windows and Mac. All you’ll need is the Air framework, also freely available.

Link: The Photographer’s Ephemeris

Probably, not good for the cholesterol numbers, but howzabout some meat cake! Mmmmm!

Meat Cake!